Saturday, January 16, 2010

My Desert Island Books

Suppose you were to spend ten years on a desert island, with no access to TV or the internet. All of your physical needs are taken care of: you have food, clothing, and shelter. But you are allowed to take only 10 books with you. These 10 books would have to sustain you for ten years.

What 10 books would you take?

Here are ones I would take:

1. Shakespeare2. The Bible3. The Catechism of the Catholic Church4. The Imitation of Christ5. Jane Austen6. An anthology of poetry, e.g., The New Penguin Book of English Verse

As for the remainder, I’m not sure. Here are some possibilities:

Plato? I need to read some more of his books before I decide.

Aristotle? I’ve read Categories and De Interpretatione and they were dry as dust.

Homer? I enjoyed The Odyssey and am making my way through The Iliad. But I’m not sure if I would read them multiple times.

St. Teresa of Avila? Haven’t read very much from her yet, so the jury’s out.

Aquinas? Haven’t started reading him yet. May turn out to be too dry for me.

Augustine? I’m a third of the way through his De Civitate Dei. It hasn’t been too enjoyable. We’ll see.

Dante? I read the Inferno. It was alright.

I received the "How To Read A Book" DVD for Christmas, and it was interesting to hear Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren list their top 10 desert island books:

6 Comments:

Wow, this is really hard. I'm not sure "Jane Austen" or "Collected Blah" isn't cheating. I'd take the collected works of each of the following authors (main reason in brackets). Most of them have pretty decent-sized oeuvres.